


Old Cars

by tawg



Series: Beggars and Choosers [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comment Fic, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-20
Updated: 2011-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel steps out and leaves Jimmy to deal with living, and hunting, and the Winchesters. Set early season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Cars

Sam gets used to it a lot quicker than Dean does. Jimmy doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it. The hard burn and crippling stretch, the rush of wind and wings in his ears, and then that odd tingle in his face when Castiel has left his body, like the aftershocks of a sneeze.

The Impala veering across the road because both Sam and Dean have their eyes covered. Apparently Castiel hasn’t gotten used to giving them much warning. Not that Jimmy ever sees it coming. Burning up for all eternity, and then the sneeze, and then he’s in the back seat with Sam handing him a Twinkie and Dean cussing and shaking his fist at the roof of the car.

Jimmy doesn’t know how to tell Dean that Heaven isn’t up.

Jimmy’s been wearing the same socks and underwear for over two years.

Jimmy isn’t cut out for this.

They rent double rooms, like always. The first few times Jimmy stretched out on the couch, his feet hanging off the end. Then there was a long period of nothing, and when he came back his shirt was cut open, and Sam was stitching him up with fishing line and a grimace, and Dean was yelling at the ceiling.

“You couldn’t have fixed him _before_ flapping off?!”

Jimmy thinks that it probably just didn’t occur to Castiel. Angels are like that. Jimmy is just a shirt with too many buttons popped off.

He doesn’t remember getting better. The next time he comes back the tie is gone, and Jimmy wonders if it had been destroyed, or thrown away, or maybe if it had been left in that hotel with the blue sheets being torn into bandages.

Jimmy still has the same socks.

Jimmy still has the Twinkie wrapper shoved in the pocket of his coat.

He has no wallet (left on the sideboard of his house, because he hadn’t thought he’d be gone long), no skills, no clothes that are truly clean.

He spends those long stretches on the road wondering what would be more mortifying – getting caught stealing underpants from a Walmart, getting caught stealing underpants from Dean’s duffel, or just asking one of the Winchesters for some pocket money. But then his fingernails start to itch and bleed, and his eyeballs are burning and his rib cage is too small, and it’s not a matter of his concern.

“Come on,” Sam says to him, on a stretch of dirt road in the middle of nowhere. “You need to learn how to shoot.”

Jimmy’s never held a gun before. And he’s worse at knives. His attempts at swordplay are a joke (and Castiel somehow always takes his blade with him when he goes).

He’s better at Latin than Dean, though. But most of the population is better at Latin than Dean. He can’t draw anything resembling a circle over a large area, but he can remember the symbols to turn one into a Devil’s trap, and he tells himself that the work is faster with two.

He is hopeless at splashing holy water into someone’s face. (He can remember his grandmother splashing red wine on one of his aunts, and the tears and fighting that had caused.) The action is just so inherently _rude_.

“Jesus Christ, Cas,” Dean grumbles. “Now is _not_ the time to be worrying about your freaking manners!”

Jimmy hates that it hurts so much when Dean gets his name wrong. He hates that angels are so cool and formal and built of marble and grace and stone, while Jimmy was born with a face that couldn’t lie, couldn’t even pretend to.

He’d asked once, if the Winchesters knew if Amelia was alright, if Claire was safe.

“We’ve been a little busy, what with the Apocalypse and all.”

Sam had kicked Dean under the table. “We’ll check up on them,” Sam said. “I promise.”

And none of them had ever mentioned it again.

Jimmy is good at talking to people. Heck, selling ad time for radio, you have to be good with people. Jimmy comes back and there’s a girl crying with the brothers in suits sitting across from her. He puts his hand on her shoulder and tells her that it’s okay, that it’ll be fine and she clings to him and cries and murmurs things that he can’t understand into his shoulder.

There’s a man yelling at them about what they’ve done to his son, yelling so loud that his voice cracks and Jimmy looks into his eyes and sees that the cracks go all the way down, right down into him. And tells the man that he is sorry, so sorry.

He thanks a waitress in a diner, and calls her ‘Miss’ when he does it. She pauses, and smiles at him and his easy manners, and she brings him a slice of pie, on the house.

“Maybe you do have a use,” Dean says, taking the pie.

Jimmy lets him have it. It’s what he’s good at.

Jimmy wakes up in the snow, in jeans that don’t fit and a jacket that’s too thin, and those leather shoes he’d been meaning to replace back when things were normal. He’s not wearing his own underwear. He wonders if he’s even in his own body, if maybe his soul had jumped ship and now he’s riding around in some poor schmuck who had no idea what he was getting into.

For a brief moment, he imagines that he has another chance, a way out of this mess of blood and death and hunting.

Then he realises he’ll freeze before he gets far.

He realises that the decisions he made will never leave him.

There’s nothing in his pockets. No gun (a flare gun would have been nice), no food, no mobile phone.

He’s never been camping in his life, but he’s seen it happen in movies. He piles branches together that are probably too wet. Rubs sticks together and bangs rocks, and eventually cuts his hand open with his bumbling city ways. He curses, and has to shut his eyes against the sudden light. It’s not Castiel though. Just wood burning in the forest.

Jimmy has no idea what happened, or what he did. But when Sam and Dean eventually find him, he doesn’t mention it to them.

“We needed you to look the part for this one,” Sam explains to him. “Your clothes are back in the car.”

Jimmy stares into the warmth of the crackling branches, holds on to the feeling of wet clothes and coldness biting into his fingers and toes, holds on to feeling anything.

“Burn them,” he says.

He comes back and he can’t breathe, an arm around his chest and its dark, so fucking dark.

“Calm down, Cas,” Dean murmurs in his ear, barely awake. “Get some sleep.”

Jimmy slowly lifts his hand to his mouth, and bites down on it hard. Dean is out for the count though, and Jimmy wriggles free. (He’d snuck out of bed to place presents under the Christmas tree, Amelia reaching out across the warm patch he’d left behind, pulling his pillow close and pressing her face into it.)

“You okay?” Sam asks, his voice thick and slurred with sleep.

And Jimmy really wants to say something sarcastic and bitter and witty. Instead he asks, “Are these his underpants?”

Sam laughs, a low chuckle smothered by the way his face is pressed into his pillow. Then he hauls himself up and out of bed. They’re all fully dressed, and Jimmy feels so much relief at that. “Come on,” Sam says in a low voice. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

Jimmy really isn’t ready to deal with these kinds of issues.

“Traditionally, it’s dinner and a movie,” Jimmy replies, following him out into the cool night air. Sam laughs again, and Jimmy feels his ruffled feathers smooth out.

“Drinks on me,” Sam says when they get to the bar. “But I get to tell Dean you think he’s gay.”

“Wait until I’m not around for that one.”

Jimmy doesn’t sleep on the couch anymore. Bunking with him is definitely the short straw (“You girl’s have fun braiding each other’s hair.” “’Conserving body heat’, Dean? _Really?_ ”), which Jimmy thinks is unfair because Sam takes up more space than should be physically possible, and Dean is the most disturbing cuddler that Jimmy has ever encountered, and he once had to deal with a six year old clinging to him and projectile vomiting _in the bed_ at three in the morning.

(He hopes they’re okay.)

Jimmy is clearly the prize of the three, when it comes to bed-sharing.

He wonders where Castiel would fit in that ranking.

He wonders what Castiel is doing, if he’s safe.

He wonders what would happen to him if Castiel didn’t come-

“I always thought you hated me,” Sam says out of the blue.

Jimmy is genuinely surprised by this. Despite their many, _many_ flaws, the Winchesters are hard people to hate.

“Because of when we first met, and I tried to keep you from your family.”

Jimmy shrugs. “You had the best of intentions,” he replies. “You’re a good person.”

Sam doesn’t say anything.

“Dean doesn’t understand, what it’s like to be us. The... the fire, and the pain, and the bliss. They never really leave you. There’s that part that is always touched, that always wants... to be filled up, to stop being so empty.”

Sam lets out a long, shuddering breath, that sounds very loud by Jimmy’s ear.

“To be useful.”

Jimmy wants to do something, to grab Sam’s hand, to let him know that it’s alright, but there’s the sound of wings, and the feeling of his blood boiling inside his body, and he’s gone.

When he comes back, months have passed. There’s blood on his face, and stitches running down Sam’s arm, and Dean is in a black mood, glaring out over the steering wheel at the rain drumming down on the road.

Sam hands him a Twinkie.

Dean tells him they need to work on his shooting.

Jimmy stares up at the roof of the Impala, and inhales the wet smell of grime and blood.

Jimmy feels the soft old leather underneath him, the carpet that has somehow managed to stay clean for over forty years.

Feels the old frame, tired and damaged but always rebuilt, always defined by the men riding inside it.

He’s not cut out for this life.

But it’s become familiar.


End file.
